Philip Purser (born 28 August 1925) is a British television critic and novelist. Purser was born in Letchworth, Hertfordshire. His mother had been the first female student of an art school in Sheffield, and later worked as a postcard artist in the style of Mabel Lucie Attwell. His father had a varied career after service in World War I, eventually working for Tarmac in Liverpool from 1934 when the family settled in the Wirral Peninsula. (Purser had an older sister, Rozanne).